Sunday, 9 December 2012

A plea for Indian Liberalism? Rethinking the Left’s role in the Liberal Exercise

I
don’t think I’ve called myself a liberal. I am, I believe, rooted more in the
neo-Marxian tradition of Marcuse and Althusser; unabashedly Foucauldian in some
sense, and a huge fan of Žižek. There are, of course, other intellectual
strands that have inspired me, and continue to do so; in many ways, I’m still
in my formative years. That said, I’m not a Leftist: I do not believe that the
Left would (or far less, could) achieve a working version of a Marxian utopia.
And I certainly am not on the Right. So, I guess that makes me a de
facto liberal.

This
essay isn’t a review of Guha’s lecture. Here, I borrow some of his most
influential thoughts from last night, to argue out a different conception of
Indian liberalism, positing my ideas of challenges and limitations. I am, of
course, deeply indebted to Guha for entertaining my rather long question in the
Q&A segment – something which shall form the basis of my present argument.

Guha,
as the title of his lecture goes, began speaking of the rise of India’s liberal
tradition – tracing a genealogy from Ram Mohan Roy, to Gokhale, Tagore, Gandhi,
Ambedkar and Nehru, to his teacher, Dharma Kumar. He then traced the major
threats to Indian liberalism in the post-Independence era – the first, being
the Hindu Right-wing extremism, exemplified by Ghodse’s assassination of
Gandhi; and the second, the radical Left-wing extremism which, Guha claimed
eloquently, never had any fondness for the Indian state in the first place. In
the 70s, however, there was another threat. The threat from the democratic
centre, Guha argues, began with Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian rule, culminating
in the Emergency years, and finally, the rise of dynastic politics in India –
which, Guha suggests, impeded the governance mechanism, the bureaucracy and
public institutions, most of all. Increased arbitrariness and violence by the police
and armed forces in conflict zones, too, was and does, constitute a significant
threat to liberalism in India (Guha's essay 'The Absent Liberal', in
the Outlook
Magazineprovides the context for his this argument).

Guha
ends up underwriting more problems than he does in resolving them – something I
admire about him, and a position, which I believe, is rooted in his training as
a sociologist. And it is in this respect that he has no qualms making a polemic
for liberalism – which, he argues, must reclaim patriotism from the Hindu
Right-wing chauvinists. Increased dialogue and a more dynamical political
process, he suggests would help assert liberalism in India, where people aren’t
reduced to being “useful idiots” (in Lenin’s terms), or apologists. In this
regard, Guha is incredibly patriotic, rejecting any label of “global
citizenship”. Liberalism’s strength, Guha asserts, is its incremental nature;
the fact that it never remains tied to an ideology, like the radical Left and
the Right, rejecting any claims of creating a utopia. It is precisely this
criticality, I believe, that allows Guha to posit the democratic centre as a threat
to liberalism.

In The
End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama, working extensively
with Hegel's dialectics, argues a very strong case for liberal democracies:
with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have,
he suggests, arrived at the end of history in the Hegelian sense. Of course,
Fukuyama’s arguments, as we read them twenty years since he made them, do
appear to be weak, if not entirely naïve. The crisis in the Balkans, ethnic
cleansing and genocides in Africa, the United States’ invasion of Iraq and
Afghanistan, its rising debt crisis, the resurgence of the radical Right, like
the Tea Party Movement, or the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the United
States, and a general increase in parochialism in other parts of the world,
China’s rise as a dominant global power, to name a few. In this respect, I am
undoubtedly more inclined to a Marcusian-Althusserian critique of the
capitalist/neoliberal political economy than what Guha seems to suggest –
which, in his terms, would be Left-leaning liberalism, but liberalism
nevertheless.

Clearly,
then, with the concerns Guha raises, Fukuyama’s arguments do not hold very
well. Liberal democracies may well be the dominant political-economic paradigm,
but with the threats from the democratic centre itself, from multinational
corporations and unregulated capitalism, there’s a lot Fukuyama left
under-theorised (to no fault of his own, as he
did revisit his arguments in Our
Posthuman Future). Although Guha’s arguments for Indian liberalism are
incredibly contextual, hinged on his idea of reclaiming patriotism, in my view
rethinking liberalism requires a more discursive, global engagement. In
defending my stance, however, I take recourse to another of Guha’s suggestions:
that there’s a lot the world could learn from Indian liberalism as well. Indian
liberalism, Guha argues, moves beyond the narrow rubric of economic
organisation. India’s pluralism, its diversity, its cultural heritage – the
fact that as the world’s largest democracy we’ve achieved so much, stands as
testimony to the strength of Indian liberalism. Sure, there have been problems
with democracy, many from outside, and some from within; but Guha’s faith in
the rule-bound, impersonal public institutions is something I cautiously
share. Žižek,
whom I cited in a previous essay, also expresses similar views, mostly
stemming from his
distrust of civil society (which he calls fundamentalist, right-wing, and most
of all, unaccountable).

Guha’s
polemic suggests that Indian liberals be more vocal, unafraid; that incremental
social change and political pluralism, should inform Indian liberalism – not
narrow economic models of profit maximisation or paranoia-driven governance,
and certainly more faith in its democratic institutions. In my opinion,
however, for the Indian Left to make crucial contributions to this liberal
programme, it needs to shed its apologist stance and fealty to classical
Marxism. While there’s a lot that Indian liberalism could contribute to the
world, the Indian Left, I feel, must eschew its superficial fealty to classical
Marxism and whatever illusions it harbours of achieving a utopia. In an earlier
essay, defending the relevance of Marxian sociological tradition, I have argued
that the Left in India is intellectually bankrupt (perhaps with the
exception of a few figures like Sitaram Yechury, or Prakash Karat, to an
extent) – the very idea of a Marxist politicalparty (no
matter how great a multi-party system we are – a fact that the early Left
hated) is a contradiction-in-terms and an anathema. For instance, increasing
corporate hegemony in the political sphere, or multinationals influencing
foreign policies (aspects Guha didn't discuss in his lecture), or the threat to
environmentalism (an
idea he engaged with, in his book, This Fissured Land, with Madhav
Gadgil) are issues that the Leftist scholars (with their Gramscian
influence and turn to subaltern studies) have engaged with. I have,
therefore, no apologies in arguing for a more academic grounding, or praxis,
for Leftism in India. Guha, with that charming smile of his, attests my
argument as a point for liberalism.

I’m
not sure how much of a convincing argument I’ve made in this essay. In many
ways, I am indebted to Guha for presenting a case of liberalism in a way that I
hadn’t thought of before. What I will, undoubtedly, take back from my brief
encounter with Ramachandra Guha (apart from a signed copy of Patriots
and Partisans. Yes, I am gloating), is the memory of a rich and engaging
discussion, which I believe constitutes another vital intellectual strand in my
formative years.

Postscript & notes:

Guha's book,Patriots and Partisans,in fact dedicates a chapter in discussing the problems with the Indian
political Left, and what it could have done to have made a more lasting
contribution of the multiparty, democratic process in India - a fact I came
across later, as I read through the book. However, in my arguing more a more
academic praxis for the Left in India, I am slightly skeptical of the political
Left's partaking in the democratic
process (partly, as they are still bound to various Communist ideologies). Perhaps,
what we need is a robust intellectual tradition, informed by post-Marxian and
Critical thought, primarily that of the Frankfurt School (apologies, for this
is my bias and limited knowledge speaking), and that of the Subaltern Studies.
For such a move could potentially converse with the kind of liberalism Guha
argues for, and inform the nature of public discourse in the country; the first
step among the many, if we are to partake in a Liberal Exercise.

For
most of Ramachandra Guha’s statements, I have, to my best efforts, found
citations wherever possible. Many of his statements in this essay, however, are
quoted verbatim, as I noted them during his lectures at the Times Literary
Carnival in Bandra, on 7th December 2012, and at the Max
Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda, on 8th December 2012.